Great Big Story

The year is 1982. The first compact disc player is released. George R. R. Martin’s book A Game of Thrones is still 14 years from being published. And a teenager named Robert Wardhaugh starts a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Thirty-eight years later, Wardhaugh and his group of friends are still playing the same game of D&D, quite possibly the longest continuous game of the popular fantasy role playing game. Wardhaugh has altered the rules to his liking and created a sweeping storyline that keeps his dozens of players coming back year after year. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Jarrett Adams was 17 years old, he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Fueled by his desire for justice, Adams set out to prove his innocence from within the prison law library, despite never having opened a legal textbook in his life. After enlisting the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, Adams was exonerated and his conviction was overturned, but not after he had already been incarcerated for nearly a decade. Yet his journey didn’t end there. Adams was determined to become a defense attorney himself, fighting to help others facing the same injustices. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Back in the days before electricity, a peculiar tradition rose out of southeastern North Carolina. Over vast swaths of farmland, voices would ring out to say good morning, ask for help, or just to share a ditty. The old timers called this tradition “hollerin’.” Part singing and part yelling, it was the text message of the pre-industrial age with a complicated history. But, just as telephones and automobiles were about to make hollerin’ obsolete, a group of North Carolinians put together a one-of-a-kind event that may have saved this folk tradition from dying out forever. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the summer of 1989, someone had tried to kill a beloved resident of Austin, Texas, and the people were demanding justice. The victim was barely clinging to life, as countless well-wishers sent get-well cards and cans of chicken soup. Who was this icon of Austin? A 600-year-old tree named Treaty Oak. And as the lone city forester valiantly tried to save the mighty oak’s life, the police were searching for the answer to the question: “Who would want to murder a tree?” To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once upon a time, a mysterious substance emerged that was so precious, so wondrous to have inspired a kind of worship. That magical object was … a chalk. But not just any chalk! This was Hagoromo: a Japanese brand so smooth, so perfect that some mathematicians wondered if it was made from the tears of angels. But one day it was threatened with extinction, triggering the greatest crisis the world of chalk had ever seen. Pencils down, please, as we tell the tale of a writing implement so irreplaceable, professors stockpiled it. And we’ll meet the brave teacher who singlehandedly saved its legacy from being erased. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices